UN Preparing Major Cuts in Peacekeeping If Needed, Guterres Says

The UN is preparing emergency measures to slash global peacekeeping operations if funding doesn’t come through, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, weeks after the US announced it was clawing back tens of millions of dollars in payments.

Peacekeepers “are often in places with no peace to keep, with terrorist groups,” Guterres told Bloomberg Television’s David Gura. “Sometimes they are the last resort for the protection of civilians and those are the ones who suffer.”

Guterres’s remarks were in response to President Donald Trump’s move last month to slash more than $800 million from congressional funding designated for peacekeeping in 2024 and 2025. Guterres has sought to avoid alienating Trump while also getting the US to pay its bills to the world body.

Guterres said he planned to meet with Trump when the US president comes to New York next week for the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level gathering. Trump’s team has signaled it will use the meeting to push back on European leaders’ plans to recognize a Palestinian state, and underscored that determination by denying visas to top Palestinian leaders including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to attend the gathering.

That’s put Guterres in a difficult spot. While he needs to get along with the UN’s most powerful member and its biggest financial backer, he’s also come out against several of Trump’s priorities ahead of the meeting.

On the visa denials, Guterres said that it was a violation of the agreement the US signed as the host of the United Nations. “It is better to have everybody here,” especially those who are trying to find solutions to some of the world’s biggest crises, he said.

He criticized Israel’s push to keep annexing parts of the West Bank and said the only way forward is an independent state for Palestinians — an idea the US has openly rejected.

“People say the two-state solution is difficult,” Guterres said. “But what is the alternative? A one-state solution in which millions of Palestinians will either be expelled or under a system of subjugation and discrimination without rights? Is that acceptable in the 21st century? I think it is not.”

And Guterres also rejected the Trump administration’s stated desire to use this year’s General Assembly meeting to push other nations to adopt more restrictive asylum policies. He called the UN’s convention on refugees “one of the most important instruments of human rights in the world.”

At the same time, he made clear the US and the UN will need to get along.

“I hope this would be a good opportunity to strengthen the cooperation between the United Nations and the US,” Guterres said. “The relationship has always been a fundamental pillar of international relations.”

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